The Rematch
by hydroknight01
Summary: A collection of previews for Team Hydro's 'Digimon Tamers' story arc. See individual previews/chapters for story details. Pairings: mostly Rika/Ryo; some Henry/Alice in last preview. Expect lemons in chapters 1 & 5; mild violence & language in places.
1. Preview 1 The Rematch

Important Notes:

First and foremost...  
**DISCLAIMER:  
**

**The characters and all related material herein are the property of their creators and/or copyright holders, who may be too numerous to name here. _Team Hydro_ and all affiliated parties do not claim ownership of said characters and/or material. _Team Hydro_ does not seek to infringe upon any trademarks, copyright, or any other existing legal document that may be connected to any of the above.**

There, now that's out of the way...

This is a preview chapter of a larger project myself and my writing team are working on. Perpetually in-progress; title subject to change, more chapters may/may not be added later.

The timeframe for this piece is roughly six years post-series finale. Our _Tamers_ storyline is crazily complex, a lot happens between the end of the series and our story here, which is the beginning of the story arc. Basically, it goes like this:

Two years after the end of the series, Ryo is abducted to the Digital World by a digital field. He spends the next four real-world years rounding up the Tamers' Digimon and looking for a way home. Lots of stuff happens in the Real World in the meantime, which won't be covered here.

Now, Ryo's back and Rika's mother has thrown a party to celebrate the return of the Digimon, during which Rika challenges Ryo to a friendly rematch, which doesn't go even remotely how she planned…

If you want more info on the backstory (and I suspect some will), message me and I'll see if we can't negotiate some loophole… Well, I can't give everything away, now can I?

Appropriate warnings:

This has an insanely complicated back-story. And it gets steadily more lemony toward the end. If you've read my profile, you'll already expect that; if not, go read my profile.

If lemons aren't your thing, or not what you came looking for, you might want to consider turning away now. Otherwise, welcome to the world of Team Hydro.

* * *

**Team Hydro Preview - Tamers #1**

**The Rematch**

Slowly and methodically Rika shuffled her game deck and laid out her cards, face-down, placing them carefully in the field structure that might as well have been etched into the lines on the back of her hand, into her very blood, she knew it so well. In the rock-paper-scissors style toss-up that started the game, she beat Ryo's Vaccine-Type card with her Data-Type card, and had learned in her last, disastrous face-off with him that he would now use mostly Virus-Type cards against her.

Virus-Types could mean trouble for her; having decided to play with her Nature Spirits deck, she now realised it was mostly made up of Data-Type cards like Renamon and her Digivolutions, though thankfully she'd had the sense to throw in a good mix of Vaccine-Types too. She had an uncanny knack for getting the toss-up right, but now she wasn't sure if making the first move was going to help her.

"Digimon Queen", that was the name she'd made for herself in the _DigiBattle Card Game_ community; she had a reputation for being ruthless in turning her opponents' game strategies against them and then using that to her advantage; she was well-known for sacrificing cards that were useless to her, in order to lure her opponents into a false sense of security, before crushing them and sweeping them aside.

It was a reputation she'd well-deserved, and fought hard to maintain for three consecutive tournaments; she'd found genuine thrill in seeing her opponents trembling as they stepped up to the table, knowing full-well that she was going to slaughter them and think nothing of the fact. And then Ryo had come along, and smashed her hopes of defending the title - _her_ title. Not to mention that he'd humiliated her in public; what in the world had made him think it would be a good idea to flirt with her, in front of all those people, in the middle of a damn title match?! Long had she felt reluctant to just forget about that, and justifiably so.

But she'd certainly thought about it – hell, she'd thought of little else since the day he'd broken down into a cloud of data, enveloped suddenly by a Digital Field, and vanished before the Tamers' very eyes, uploaded against his will to the Digital World, to be trapped there for four whole years, with only Cyberdramon and the other Digimon for company.

The flirting was just Ryo, she now knew; it was his nature to be as flirtatious as he could without risk of getting himself hurt, even to the point of obnoxiousness, as often as humanly possible. It was also in his nature to desire the spotlight - he had to be the centre of attention, or more pointedly, _her_ attention. If she wasn't paying him attention, even if that only extended to chiding him for doing something ridiculous or shouting him down for saying something stupid, he was pouting like a child. There were occasions where she could have confidently sworn, on a stack of Bibles, that she hated his guts and always would.

To her annoyance, however, she'd thought of him every day during his absence, in some shape or form, and had often considered swallowing her pride and forgiving him for publicly humiliating her all those years ago; to her great displeasure she'd found that her thoughts of him had slowly become more and more affectionate, like some pathetic little kid with a crush, though she didn't ever dare to admit it even to herself. She'd even caught him slipping into her fantasies once or twice – she had plenty of those - and he'd appeared in her dreams more times than she cared to remember.

And then as totally out of the blue as he'd vanished, he'd come back and turned her world on its head. Part of her had jumped for joy, much to the horror of the part that didn't, when Henry had called to tell her that his algorithm had worked, that they'd finally found a stable connection to the Digital World, and that they were that much closer to Ryo coming home.

She found herself realising that, deep down, she'd always hoped he'd find a way back, that Henry's dad and the rest of the Monster-Makers might find a way to rescue him and bring him home, though ultimately to no avail. Because in the end Ryo had essentially rescued himself, and had brought the Digimon back into their lives again; he and Cyberdramon and, more importantly, Renamon were back where they belonged. Ryo had slipped back into her life like he'd never left, and she felt oddly contented now that he was back in the Real World.

"Rika… Rika, Digivolution Phase…"

Ryo's voice jolted Rika out of her daydream. "Huh? Oh, yeah…" She'd been zoned-out in her own little world, and had momentarily forgotten about the whole damned thing. "Sorry… got sidetracked there…" She laughed awkwardly, blushed, and glared at her hand of cards like it was their fault. She realised he was looking at her, and as she briefly met his eyes a shiver ran down her spine; a thought that scared her for a split second, as she passed on Digivolving and jumped to the Battle Phase, suddenly popped into her head:

_Does he like what he sees?_

And absurd as it seemed, Rika was absolutely terrified of learning the answer to that innocent little question, whatever it might prove to be. She shook her head to loosen the cobwebs, and focused on her cards again. _Time to get your game on, girl… gonna hand his ass to him this time,_ she thought to herself and smiled again as they both passed on playing Power Cards, and she manoeuvred to launch her first assault. "Vaccine beats Virus. Your move…" she muttered, completing her turn, and watched with the eyes of a hawk as he made what moves he could.

Rika noticed that Ryo was a little rusty, as she watched him over several turns – totally to be expected, given that he probably hadn't had all that much opportunity to play or even to practice for the four years he'd been away – something told her Cyberdramon wouldn't have the patience. But something wasn't right here; a little nagging feeling in her gut that told her Ryo was up to something...something about this game, the cards he was playing and the way he was playing them... something seemed off.

A few turns later, it clicked: he was making mistakes, too many mistakes and _amateur_ones at that; he was leaving himself open too often and blatantly giving her opportunities to exploit the weak areas of his abstract, plain-as-day strategy. The Ryo she remembered, to whom only she was considered at least equal in skill, he was better than this; he was widely thought-of as the best damn player in the world – the Ryo she remembered wasn't known as "Digimon King" for nothing. The Ryo sat across the kotatsu from her, annoyingly trying his damndest to tickle the soles of her feet with his toes, was about as kingly as a court jester - he was a joke. A _bad_ joke.

He was breaking every rule-of-thumb she could think of; he'd discarded perfectly-usable cards and even some of his better ones, cards that could have ripped her defences to shreds, without so much as a thought, like they were junk. He was holding his hands so low that she could even see some of his cards, and they weren't exactly brilliant cards either.

It was almost like… like he was trying to…

_No…_ she thought quietly, though she really already knew the answer. _No, he wouldn't… He wouldn't be so pathetic…would he?_ Anger rose up inside her, she knew what was coming next; in the next couple of turns, maybe even the _next_turn, he'd either try to provoke her so she could wipe the floor with him on her counter-attack, or he'd call time on the game. She could see it coming, and it was so damned obvious that it was making her sick to her stomach: Ryo "the Legendary Tamer" Akiyama was letting her win.

_Damn it, I can't believe this!_ She thought, silently beginning to seethe. _He's practically handing me the whole game on a silver platter!_Utterly stunned, Rika stared in furious disbelief at her game field, realising she'd been playing on autopilot for most of the game, and saw that she had him covered for everything his pathetic line-up could throw at her; any attack he could launch wouldn't even get past her defences, and anything she threw at him would burn through his like they weren't even there.

And then she heard it: that feeble, pitiful sigh of defeat that felt to her like a slap in the face. "Too many bad hands…Looks like it's not my night tonight … I'm screwed. You win, Pumpkin." He sighed again and shook his head in mock wonder, scratching his head like he was trying to figure out exactly how he'd managed to screw it all up so badly, before crossing his arms over his chest with all the seriousness in the world, and what Rika could have sworn was a glimmer of triumph in his eye.

He might have lost, but he'd also won; he'd gotten what he'd wanted. He'd humiliated her again! First he'd done it in public, and now he was doing it in private. But worst of all, he'd cheated her - in her own damn house! Rika swore under her breath, then swore aloud, and the well-greased floodgates of her anger dam fell away with oft-practiced ease.

"That's bullshit, you…you…!"

Rika hissed at him as she leaned across the table and slammed her fist down on her game field, "Damn it Ryo! You _let_me win, you bastard!" She pounced on him suddenly and threw herself over the kotatsu, scattering cards everywhere and grabbed at his throat with one hand as she punched at him with the other. Ryo suddenly burst into a fit of laughter as he leaned back, ducking cleanly out of Rika's grasp and slipping out from under the heated table. Rika snarled as he skittered and slithered yet another few inches away from her - he was half-way up her futon now - and finally lost her somewhat-short temper.

"I can't believe you just did that to me, you dirty sonovabitch! This was supposed to be fair, damn it!!" She blared.

Rika was suddenly glad that her room was on the opposite side of the house, away from the party; at least she could beat him to a pulp in peace without ruining the party for everyone else - and without her mother diving in to stop her. Fuming she threw herself after him and punched at him again, and skimmed his nose by less than a centimetre. Ryo kept on laughing, much to his own peril; he didn't know just how short Rika's temper had become in his absence – or how dangerous she became when she lost it.

"C-come on Rika," he chuckled, and ducked another volley, "It was just a game!"

Blinded by her rage, Rika silently failed to notice that her last lance toward him had left her straddling his waist, precariously-balanced mere inches over his crotch. She silently realised, before finding her self wondering how the hell she'd gotten into such an exposing position. Mortified, she thought of the way they'd look if someone walked in…

With an angry roar Rika threw her arms over her head, and brought them smashing down on her futon to either side of his head in warning. Seething, she glared at him, grinning nervously between the pile-drivers that were her fists; if he kept avoiding her like this, she'd mangle him if she managed to land a blow, or rather, _when_. Ryo saw that she was genuinely pissed, and with great difficulty swallowed his urge to laugh at her outrage, which would only serve to rile her further.

Finally Rika grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, wrenched him up, and dangled him mid-punch over her pillow.

She discovered too late that Ryo was too heavy for her to hold with just one hand for very long. Four years alone in the Digital World must have been like one never-ending workout. Her own wavering sense of balance and questionable body weight were against her, and if she wasn't careful, she'd overbalance and come crashing down on top of him – one more humiliation in a seemingly unending string. She quietly wondered if he could feel her shaking, struggling to hold him up, before pulling him yet closer and hissing in his face.

"Half of me is screaming to punch your face onto the other side of your skull, you cheating little prick," she spat harshly, and finally landed a solid blow across his face, splitting his lip.

"Why'd you do that to me, Ryo?" she demanded, "Why play with me like that, you sly bastard?"

Ryo only smiled at her, hanging limply in her grasp and softly muttered,

"So if one half is looking to kill me," he asked, grinning that stupid grin that had ingrained itself on her memories of him, "What's the other half going to do?"

Ryo stared defiantly into her eyes as she moved to punch him a second time; for some reason, that ridiculous grin of his made Rika hesitate. Ryo managed to smile at her again without laughing, and muttered,

"I missed you, Rika… I don't know why, but I missed you like hell."

Rika's eye widened in surprise at the confession as Ryo straightened himself up and, finally taking the strain of his weight away, he pressed into her body's embrace, and planted his lips on hers as her face hovered unsurely above him.

The kiss was the last thing Rika expected to happen; it had been little more than a peck on the lips, but it had triggered something inside her, something that demanded she respond.

Her reaction was instinctive, automatic, almost robotic; her arms coiled around his neck, she slid deeper into his lap as her thighs slid down across her futon and then tightened in their grip of his hips, and before she could truly realise what her body was doing without her consent, Rika eagerly plunged herself into returning the kiss tenfold. Ryo's hands deftly climbed from the futon to rest on her ribs; the sensation tickled her suddenly, and she squeaked in surprise.

Caught unawares, Rika abruptly tumbled from whatever high-off place their kiss had taken her, and plummeted back into her senses with a muffled bang; an eye fluttered half-open and conveyed to her the sight of Ryo's lips on hers, and her pride screamed in disgust at what the rest of her was doing, yet her own lips refused to stop so long as Ryo wouldn't, and he showed no signs of pausing for thought.

Slowly, sluggishly, Rika tried to regain her self-control, as a single hand tentatively placed itself on Ryo's chest and began to push him away with little real effort; her fingertips dug in, grazed his flesh through his shirt, her body refusing to stop what it had started.

Four years' worth of boiling lust made her unwilling to let go of him, to relinquish what the kiss between them had wrought in her; her wounded pride bellowed its objection again, but her heart promptly told it, in no uncertain terms, to find a bridge and jump off it.

Her bruised ego's demand, that she heal the wound he'd inflicted to her reputation eight long years ago, had always overpowered anything else she'd felt toward Ryo, her nemesis-turned-friendly-rival, right up until they'd rescued Calumon together in the Digital World, and fought together as Sakuyamon and Justimon during the D-Reaper battle in Shinjuku.

Since then and more so since his disappearance four years ago, the image of him that Rika had held in her mind had become blurrier and blurrier; her vision of Ryo Akiyama as her _DigiBattle_ and _Digimon Grand Prix_ nemesis had darkened and slowly blacked out, and in her heart had lit up again in the shape of a rather hungry something else.

Since he'd strolled unthinkingly and unconcernedly up to her door a few days ago, after four whole years of bleak, heart-rending absence from her life, she'd thought of no-one else but him; almost overnight, she'd become obsessed with him, driven to the point of distraction, her mind consumed by thoughts of nothing else.

Without him she'd been colder and emptier inside than however much she might have feigned or pretended before, but now he was back and something inside her felt whole again; almost literally, she'd warmed to his resumed presence. Apparently he'd missed her, and now he was even daring to show it with a kiss. But for Rika, after those four cold and lonely years without him near her, a simple kiss was not enough.

This sudden, all-changing kiss between them was not enough, she wanted more than that from him, and even in her darkest, most lusting dreams she had never dared to admit it to herself even in her sleep. She wanted him, ached to have him and make him her own, and she'd known it and suppressed it and denied it for as long as she could remember.

From the moment he'd first traipsed into her fantasies and made her scream herself awake in shocking ecstasy, those dreams and the thought of having him between her legs in her bed had haunted her at night, and now she was admitting it… suddenly she'd never felt better about telling herself a truth she'd always known deep down, but had never dared to admit; her fantasies had done that for her.

_I want him,_ she thought to herself darkly, excitedly as a certain delicious tingle shot down her spine and set her dripping between her legs; _I want him and if it takes me all night, I am_ getting_ what I want!_

Rika broke the kiss suddenly and inhaled deeply as the breath in her lungs ran out, before shoving Ryo down roughly by the scruff of his scrawny neck, and held him there for her eyes to take in; helpless and at whatever mercy she deigned to grant him, just the way she'd always wanted him – below her, beneath her, and utterly at her disposal.

"Care to explain exactly what the _fuck_ you think you're doing?"

She snapped at him breathless and starting to sweat, scowled at him with thunderheads in her face and forked lightning in her eyes, and raised her fist ready to punch that sly smirk of his straight to the inside of his head. The smirk came as expected, that same charming smirk he broke out whenever he greeted her or made some snide wisecrack at her expense, called her those stupid nicknames he liked to call her…

…_whatever you say, Pumpkin… …calm down, wildcat…_

The fist fell like a sledgehammer, only to slam harmlessly into the pillow as she bent her head and sprawled herself atop him, to repay his kiss again.

Rika's lips fell ravenously on Ryo's as his hands crept up the length of her sides, searching, prying into her most sensitive spots where he might lay them to rest, before crisscrossing them carefully over the sky blue ocean that was the back of that torn-at-the-elbows long sleeved tee shirt to hold her the way he'd longed to hold her for the last few days.

She wanted him, and he knew it; Ryo could smell that deep, choking musk that could only be coming from one place, that little niche that lay centrepiece below those curvaceous hips, and the jolt of pleasure he felt as he caught himself envisioning what delights might wait there was accompanied by the shock of her pulling at his split, still bleeding bottom lip with those sharp, perfect little teeth.

He saw a glint of mischief in her eye, and that playful little grin that he would soon come to adore gave him no warning when she decided to sharply suck his tongue so far into her mouth that she almost swallowed it. The unusual and somewhat unsettling sensation made him moan into the kiss with a surprised pleasure, and in reply Rika sucked his tongue harder.

Ryo quietly wondered if she might be trying to suck it out altogether; it would certainly bring an end to his sarcastic remarks and playful banter, and he pondered what other tricks she could do with that sharp and slippery mouth of hers.

His playfulness welling up, Ryo tried in vain to reclaim his tongue from her mouth, proving no match when she refused. Sharply Rika rose up and pulled him with her, only releasing his tongue when they were both upright and she had wrapped her arms solidly around his neck to hold him there against her.

Ryo wanted to ask her where she had learned to do that amusing and almost disturbing little trick, but was abruptly cut short when Rika encircled his waist with her strong and powerful legs and pulled herself closer to him, bringing her rapidly-dampening crotch to rest against his.

The meeting touch was unexpected, the shock of pleasure almost electric in nature. Rika felt the bulge of his arousal pressing against her most sensitive, most intimate place and grinned with a devilish defiance, and said,

"Looks like somebody's gotten a little bit excited… So much for a 'quiet rematch'…"

"That was before you beat on me and tried to _swallow_ _my tongue_."

Ryo remarked sarcastically; Rika giggled a hiccuping laugh at the snide remark and abruptly toppled backwards, arms still clasped tightly around his neck, and dragged him on top of her. She tightened her hold, still giggling and forced his head to rest on her shoulder, and whispered into his ear,

"I want you, Ryo…_hehe_… give me what I want."

"Yeah, I'd kinda gathered that much, Rika,"

"So quit stalling and _give me what I want!"_

He chortled when she licked leisurely at his neck, her rough, wet tongue dragging slowly across the stubble of his first real shave, and softly sank her teeth into his earlobe, before whispering back to her, "Convince me nicely, and just maybe I will--" His words caught in his throat when he felt her hand take hold of the seat of his pants and squeeze playfully.

"You know me, Ryo," she hissed suggestively, lustfully, all dizziness and schoolgirl laughter gone.

"I've never _done_ 'nicely'. I'm not a 'nicely' kind-of girl…"

Rika saw the stunned mix of mild pain and frustrated pleasure erupting onto his face, and giggled suggestively. Her mother was always begging her to show more of her feminine side; sleeping with Ryo was about as feminine she was ever going to let herself get.

That and seducing her long-time rival into bed was the ultimate rebellion against Makino's constant torrent of fussing and bitching. Maybe the idea of a boyfriend on her scene, or at the very least, a lover, would get her ever-encroaching mother to at last take the hint and get the hell off her case. "Give me what I want Ryo," she whispered, squeezing just a little tighter, "or I'm going to _take_ _it from you_."

Rika smiled as she slid a hand down between them and heard him gasp, as he felt her finding and pulling down the zipper on his pants. Did he want her as badly as she wanted him? Did he want her _at all?_Or was he just playing with her again? Rika wasn't savvy enough about the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing to be able to tell.

She knew plenty about sex, more than enough to know what she was doing and what she was going to do, but she was sorely lacklustre when it came to figuring out how her opposite number's mind worked. Her still-objecting pride didn't want to know if Ryo liked her and wanted her, it was sickened by the very notion that he might feel something for her, but the rest of her burned to know how his naked skin would feel against her own.

She kissed him again, in hopes of keeping the fire within at bay for just a little longer, until she could bend him and break him, until he wanted this as much as she did but it only served to further stoke the flames of her desire.

Her arousal grew stronger as she felt him finally responding to her, the gentle return of his hips pushing back against her own, trapping her hand against him as it slithered in through the opening it had just made. Ryo gasped again as her hand encircled him through his underwear, a let out a moan that rumbled through Rika as she lay below him.

It enthralled her to think that she could excite him, and she knew she could take things that much further, under her own steam, should she dare. Did he think she would? Ryo didn't know half the things her mother's fussing had made her dare to do in his absence.

Maybe she would tell him… later, when their desires were sated and the fires burning low, their bodies spent and buzzing with pleasure, when they had nothing to do with themselves but talk. Talking was for later; right now, Rika had far more interesting things to contemplate, Ryo's arousal had grown considerably judging by the size of the thing she grasped so tightly in her hand. Gently she squeezed it to hear him moan again, and she smiled, building the anticipation for what they both knew was coming.

Deftly Rika slipped her bare foot up the length of his thigh and dipped her big toe over the edge of the zipper that grated and chafed against her wrist and, releasing him momentarily so she could undo the button at the top with both hands, she softly pushed the offending attire to loiter around his ankles and then flicked them off entirely.

Eager to keep an even status quo of undress between them, Ryo somewhat unceremoniously grasped the hem of Rika's tee shirt and, with a hand quickly and carefully placed in the small of her back, lifted the garment over her head to reveal what lay beneath.

* * *

Afterword:

I know cliffhangers suck, but this is all I can post right now. I ask that you deal with it, because I have to; much as I would like to continue and post more, circumstances and team rules conspire against me. You're not alone, I don't like it either.

Again, if anyone wants to get clued in as to what's gone on before events as transpired above, visit my profile and feel free to drop me a line. Can't tell you what we have in store for these two (among others), but I can certainly tell you want's gone on before-hand, in great and sometimes worrying detail - I should know, I had a hand in most of it...

Reviews would be greatly appreciated, if anyone would be so kind as to spare the time.

Thanks for reading.


	2. Preview 1a Morning After

**DISCLAIMER:  
**

**The characters and all related material herein are the property of their creators and/or copyright holders, who may be too numerous to name here. _Team Hydro_ and all affiliated parties do not claim ownership of said characters and/or material. _Team Hydro_ does not seek to infringe upon any trademarks, copyright, or any other existing legal document that may be connected to any of the above.**

This is a _direct_ continuation of **The Rematch**, skipping the, uh, more _mature_ material. Written in something like three hours, and released in record time by our editors, this chronicles the rather amusing conversation that takes place on the morning following Rika and Ryo's rematch. Enjoy.

* * *

**Team Hydro Preview - Tamers #1A**

**Morning After**

Slowly, groggily, Rika rose from her slumber. The morning light was annoying; she pulled the blanket higher, to hide her still-heavy eyes from it. She ached, had slept awkwardly. Or not… given that she was aching in places that she couldn't remember complaining before…

Dizzily she reminded herself that it wasn't even _remotely_ that time of the month, so what gave her body the right to complain—

That particular, bleary train of thought was promptly derailed by the brushing of foreign skin against her own. Warily she cracked open an eye, just enough to see what the hell was going on… and promptly screwed it shut again when met by the sight of a face on the pillow below her.

_RYO!_ Her mind screamed, the night before trickling back in a slow-flowing torrent of remembrance. _Oh shit, Ryo! This is SOOO not happening to me!!!_ Their rematch… and her throwing punches - he'd cheated her, she remembered – and then… _Oh. Oh, shit. Mom's gonna kill--… or not…_

If not for the fact that she was trying to keep a straight, sleeping face, Rika might – would! – have positively _beamed_ at her own audacity. She opened her eyes as she shifted up to lean on her elbows, careful to keep the blanket draped over her head to shade her morning eyes, and looked down at the sight below her.

She'd only ever imagined the two of them like this in her dreams… and had never once, for the life of her, considered what she'd do if she woke up one morning and found that dream had been made a reality. _Way to forward-plan, Rika… Now what are you gonna do?_

She was left little time to think up a course of action however, as the idiot below her began to stir. Rika froze as Ryo began to wake, and found herself in the perfect position to keep him reasonably pinned. Until she could make a little more sense of the night before, of course… and until the coast was reasonably clear enough that she could send him on his merry way without being seen – or make as much _noise_ as they liked.

Ryo was roused by warm, moist breath on his face, and the faint sound of a voice calling him an idiot. A familiar voice too, one not at all unpleasant to wake up to, despite that voice now branding him a wide variety of unspeakables.

"…told you that you could sleep in my bed, huh jackass?"

His eyes opened to grace him with the sight of a very scowly, and very _naked_, Rika laying atop him. Instantly awake, Ryo almost panicked for a split-second, and wondered precisely _how_ he'd come to be in this predicament, pleasant surprise as it was. The events of the previous night came back to him in a rush, and he found himself _very_ amused, if not a little worried.

"You owe me an explanation, you asshole…" Rika muttered, her chin cupped in the palm of her hand. She didn't need one, but it'd be fun to watch him squirm.

"And good morning to you too, Pumpkin," he grinned nervously, worming his way out of answering her awkward demand.

One misstep, he knew, one tiny little word out of place, and she'd hurt him in ways that'd make him _very_ useless to her for a repeat performance of last night. And any other girl, for that matter… not that he _wanted_ any other girl, but that was kinda beside the point.

"So we're back to 'Pumpkin' now, huh," she muttered through pressed-together teeth.

"I distinctly remember you saying something about calling me 'Wildcat' permanently…"

Rika grinned, seeing the blush on his face. She knew that he'd said it in the afterglow of a particularly… _heated_ moment between them, and what he'd meant by it.

"You sure were… are…" he replied,

"I dare say I have the scratch marks on my back to prove it…"

He chuckled, and they laughed together. Slowly, sleepily, Rika lowered herself down to rest her chin on hands placed carefully over his chest, and blew a childish raspberry in his face for his snide remark. She was feeling playful for some reason, strange for her this soon after waking up.

Perhaps it had something to do with the good time they'd shown each other a few hours ago… She _was_ still feeling a little afterglow-y… if that's what this feeling was. _Contentment… that's what it's called,_ she thought.

And she _was_ content with the things they'd done together… she imagined that perhaps it wouldn't feel this way afterwards with anyone else; after all, it hadn't felt this way afterwards with….

_TOTALLY not the time to think about that right now, Rika…_ she told herself, scrunching her eyes at the images that had begun to run amok in her mind. Those few, rare, and now decidedly-strange occasions when Jeri had convinced her to… _play_ with her….

Those were not something to remember after a night of having Ryo in her bed… even if those experiences _had_ lent themselves to her apparent prowess the night before.

"Something wrong?" he asked, below her still, the look on her face puzzling him.

"…'m still tired…" she muttered, perhaps a little too loudly, for at that moment, there came a tapping at her locked door, and they both _froze_.

"Rika? Are you awake in there, honey?" It was Seiko, her grandmother.

"I'll be right out grandma… 'm getting up…" Rika stuttered, but made no moves to do so – how could she, still wrapped rather comfortably around Ryo, and both of them stark-naked with no-where for him to hide.

"No, no need," Seiko replied, saving both their necks from a ton of embarrassment.

"You go right back to sleep, it's still early. I'm heading into town to do some shopping with Renamon, and I'm just letting you know that your mother had to run out to the studio…"

Rika groaned quietly; her mother was _obsessed_ with work. What little time the woman spent at home was usually directed at trying to puppeteer her daughter's life – _unsuccessfully_, said daughter might add, though not for lack of trying.

"She'll probably be gone most of the day," Seiko added from the hallway,

"You know how she gets with paperwork after her photo shoots… But you go back to bed now. You must be tired after the party. I'll see you when we get back, dear…"

Rika let out an almost inaudible sigh of relief as she heard her grandmother treading lightly back down the hallway, toward the living room and the front door; Ryo's sigh was a little louder, and she jammed her hand over her mouth as she giggled, and they both proceeded to _quietly_ crack up with laughter.

Rika pulled the covers down over their heads to muffle their voices further, before abruptly silencing Ryo's manic chuckling with a kiss.

"Now I wonder what we can do in the dark, while my grandma's out of the house…" she wondered aloud, in a voice so sly that she could almost _hear_ him licking his lips, before sprouting a grin that was nothing short of sultry; too bad for him that he couldn't see it.

***

Down the hallway, in the living room, Seiko heard her granddaughter's hearty laughter, stifled like that of her lover, and shared a smile with the girl's Digimon partner.

"It seems those two are getting along rather well…" Renamon smirked.

Seiko nodded, with an approving smile.

"It was brewing long before Ryo disappeared, you know," she commented.

"Perhaps even since Reaper Fall… I'm just glad that they've settled their differences enough to get on with it at last."

"I agree that it's certainly taken them long enough…" Renamon answered, "Though perhaps through no fault of their own."

"We humans have a saying, Renamon, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder', and I'm quite comfortable to say that it applies _directly_ to them."

"It might not be my place to question your judgement, but are you sure it is wise to leave them alone?"

"Quite sure, they're more than old enough to take care of themselves now… and I'm getting far too old to be worrying about the habits of the young… I did more than enough of that while you were away, dear. Now, I believe I can hear those shops calling… Rika needs _another_ new pair of jeans, and better we get them than her mother… there'll be a small war if Rumiko buys her another dress…"

And with one last look in the direction of her granddaughter's firmly locked bedroom, Seiko turned with Renamon to depart.

* * *

So, what do you guys think? I've had a number of messages from people wanting to know what happens following The Rematch, and this is as close as I could post to it without breaching team rules. Hope you liked it, let me know what you thought with a review. ^_^


	3. Preview 2 Rumour

**DISCLAIMER:  
**

**The characters and all related material herein are the property of their creators and/or copyright holders, who may be too numerous to name here. _Team Hydro_ and all affiliated parties do not claim ownership of said characters and/or material. _Team Hydro_ does not seek to infringe upon any trademarks, copyright, or any other existing legal document that may be connected to any of the above.**

Please Note: This chapter is **not** a continuation of "The Rematch". This story preview, 'Rumour', takes place further down the line in Ryo and Rika's relationship. This piece isn't lemony, but Rika does rough up one of her classmates - sorry if that is in any way a discouragement. Also, Renamon appears! And how!

Story-wise, this is a rather sharp turn of events. Rika is plagued by a rather nasty rumour at school, concerning the identity of her boyfriend, and the resident bully makes the grievous error of throwing it in her face. How she deals with this might seem a little OOC, but not so, when one considers the personality shift she experienced during Ryo's four-year absence.

Be advised: here be a very irate Rika, and a school bully who just doesn't know how to keep her mouth shut.

**Chapter edited: new Digi-Modify/card slash scene.**

* * *

**Team Hydro Preview - Tamers #2**

**Rumour**

Rika slammed her locker shut and threw her backpack onto her shoulder; those stares were starting to get to her. _Renamon's only a whisper away,_ she reminded herself, but passed it up. She didn't need her Digimon partner to help her ignore a few childish sputterings, to hold her hand like a little kid. Besides, Yamaki would blow a gasket if she called her Digimon into view of the public for something trivial like this. No; she'd handle this herself. But, why the hell was everyone talking about her?

Usually, these spineless ingrates were too afraid to even _look_ in her direction, and yet now they were all talking about her. So, what was so interesting and yet so incriminating that she was supposed to have done, but no-one wanted to say louder than a whisper? She'd had to stop herself several times already from just turning around screaming _Would somebody just _tell_ me what's going on here?!_

But suddenly, that snide bitch Maria from the next grade up beat her to it. "So Rika, why don't you tell us about your new boyfriend?" The girl sneered, putting herself in Rika's way with that smart-assed look on her face - something Rika had always seen as a good reason to crack her knuckles and lay the cretin out like a tapestry. It also usually meant the girl had some morsel of embarrassment to hurl at her – or _thought_ she did - which caused her to feel the need to make a scene.

But then Maria always looked that way - until Rika pushed her out of the way, or gave her another black eye.

Maria had quickly become a nemesis of sorts upon Rika's return to private schooling, at her interfering mother's behest. Maria was half a head taller than her, so skinny it had to hurt. And, evidently, in possession of too few braincells to see the danger in putting herself in Rika's bad books. If not for her auburn hair and her eyes being brown, everything else about Maria screamed Stereotypical-Blue-Eyed-Blonde. Even to the point of being a rampaging bitch.

American-born, Maria and her family had moved to Japan when her corporate-junkie father got transferred to a Shinjuku office by one of the big firms. Hers was one of many families pulled in from overseas, to compensate for the workforce panic six years ago, where some forty percent of the working population had quit their deskjobs during the aftermath of the D-Reaper's invasion. Fearing that the city was a Digimon magnet and no-longer safe to inhabit, they'd upped sticks, grabbed their families and possessions, and point-blank fled.

Maria was from a different world, and had made efforts to model her new life on whatever her old one had looked like – a life so plastic, in Rika's opinion, it boarderd on prosthetic. The girl strutted around their private city school like she owned the place, with her so-called clique trailing along behind her, flouting her whole Classy-American-Girl act with her expensive hair extensions, big brown eyes and tacky make-up to any remotely-popular guy who stopped to watch her go by.

Naturally, she'd been under the impression, for most of her Japanese school-life and probably most of her American one too, that she was both pretty and tough; in her opinion, she was everything any self-respecting guy, of any given nationality, could ever want. That is, until the day Rika arrived and rained on her sad little parade, putting the nasty American piece of work squarely where she belonged - in the nurse's office, knocked clean into next week and with every colour of bruise to show for it.

Even the school Principle had to admit, it'd been one hell of an entrance for Rika's first day back, and only a taste of things to come because Maria kept coming back for more. The two arch-rivals had been at each-other's throats ever since; not a day went by that they didn't have some kind of argument or harsh words to spit at one-another.

Rika knew she'd snap like a rotten twig if Maria didn't get out of her face; just _one_ more sneer, _one_ more snide comment about her relationship with Ryo would be all it would take and she'd put that ignorant, bullying bitch in a bodybag. But she wasn't in the mood for a visit to the Principle's office today. Instead she held her head high, and gave the snotty wench a solid _not in the mood for this shit_ shove, a shove that was really more a grab-and-throw manoeuvre than the half-assed push she'd meant it to be, and followed it with something plain and simple – something the brainless idiot would understand.

"I don't have time for your bullshit, Maria; so either get outta my way, or get hurt - _again_. It's your choice."

And move the girl did. But not before adding some quick remark that Rika didn't quite manage to catch.

"…screwing…stupid kid…goggles."

Rika's left eye twitched momentarily, as the mumbled words passed between her ears, and her mind took an extra second to compile the three phrases into the inaudible sentence she'd missed. The realisation of who they were talking about, of who the Rumour Mill had paired her with, finally hit home. And it hit her hard enough to stop her in her tracks.

Rika didn't care that they knew she had a boyfriend; Ryo was great, and in more ways than one... But _him_?! Of all the Tamers, why did they have to saddle her with _Takato Matsuki_?! That was _it_, enough was enough; she'd have to put a stop to this before she became the laughing stock of the whole damn school.

Ryo would have been the truth, and she'd have admitted it there and then, with her dignity unscathed - and made an example of the first one stupid enough to laugh at her, by killing them where they stood. Henry perhaps wouldn't have been so bad; the guy was alright, and she owed him some serious kudos, given the Operation: Doodlebug stunt he'd pulled off as Mega Gargomon – hell, _every_ Tamer owed him something for that.

But _Takato_?! That was a _real_ insult, and she wasn't going to stand for it. But she'd have to have a damn-good reason to skip school for the rest of the day, if she was going to do something about this here and now… And it occurred to her that she _did_, but only if she snapped at just the right moment; the moment when Maria went that one, single, _tiny_ step too far.

To say the least, Maria was predictable, as usual; "So, what's this 'Goggle-Head' kid like?" the girl leaned on a locker nearby, wheeling her free hand in circles to emphasise herself, "Is he… y'know… _any good_?" The crude and utterly tactless remark struck the correct nerve, and the rest, the urge and reaction, tumbled violently into place.

Rika felt her control slipping through her fingers like grains of sand, and did little to hold onto it; it was bad enough that Maria had the impression that she'd been dating Takato, but to imply that she'd been _sleeping with him_ as well…

The moment Rika raised her fist and swung for the girl, a crowd seemed to materialise out of thin-air. This was not, and never would be, a good sign; now Rika wouldn't have any choice in the matter, if she wanted to get out of here in one piece. If Maria's friends got their hands on her after this, she'd end up in the hospital bed next-door to Miss American Super-bitch. She'd be pulled to the ground and beaten unconscious in seconds. Nevertheless, in a single movement Rika spun on her heel, and with an effortless grace borne of her experiences as Sakuyamon, marched her fist straight into Maria's sneering face.

Maria stumbled from the force of the blow, but picked herself right back up, and wiped the blood away from her split lip. Nonaka would _not_ silence her, not this time. She'd obviously been right on the money with that one. The spiky-haired, fashion-challenged lunatic would have to beat her to a pulp before she'd let this one slide, before she'd shut her mouth and keep it shut.

Everyone knew Rika was crazy; she'd been booted back here from public school for mangling a guy who'd been stupid enough to rag on one of her friends. The moron had been trying to impress her, had called Ryo Akiyama a gutless wonder who ran away from his problems. Why anyone would want to impress a tramp like Nonaka was beyond Maria; the witless idiot had been right, anyway - Akiyama was a sad little looser.

And then, as a determined Maria pulled herself up from the tiled floor and her cronies moved in for the kill, Rika smiled self-confidently, tossed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, and played her trump card. Calmly, she uttered that one, special word that would solve all her problems, and could make so many more.

"Renamon?"

The world warped and bent out of shape, and the bright-yellow fox Digimon phased into sight behind her. A gasp rippled through the crowd; everyone jumped back a foot or so in shock, followed quickly by a quiet mumbling; was that a Digimon? Here? What the hell was this?!

Maria's so-called clique promptly abandoned her, melting back into the blur of surprised faces. Renamon's eyes fell upon her calm-faced, but inwardly turbulent Tamer and asked, "Is there a problem, Rika?" If the Digimon had realised that her Tamer had called her into full view of the public, she didn't show it.

"No," Rika replied in her usual cool, aloof tone as she glared daggers at Maria. A bone-chilling smile broke across the left side of her face, and she cracked her knuckles against her palm; she was going to enjoy every spare nanosecond of this - just like she always did. Because, in terms of peer support, this was a moment where Rika could say, without a second's hesitation, _mine's better than yours_. Nothing that Maria had at her beck-and-call could trump the power and skill of a fully-trained Digimon Partner.

"I just needed someone at my back." Rika answered calmly, still grinning that evil smile.

"For what, might I ask?" Renamon enquired, and received no reply.

A half-second layer, Rika snapped her knee into the girl's stomach, before slamming her fist into the side of Maria's head as she buckled with the impact. The prissy girl dropped to the floor like a stone down a well; tiny droplets of blood from her disjointed nose and split lip scattered like a fine mist on the metal locker behind her.

_Damn, that felt good… _Rika thought to herself, shaking the tingling out of her hand and snarled as it began to take on a familiar numbness. _But she'll never learn when to quit…_. Rika waited patiently for Maria to pick herself back up. That one was probably the first of a few; it usually took a while, and a lot of otherwise-avoidable pain, for Maria to concede defeat, and kicking someone while they were down was something that Rika just wouldn't do – brawler she might be, but even she had morals.

Renamon flinched visibly, if barely, at the unnecessary violence, but it had been provoked for all she could tell. "For that, Renamon. Now a little crowd control, if you don't mind..." Rika answered the Digimon's question flatly, and retrieved her D-Arc from its place on her belt.

She grabbed the special Modify Card she'd been saving, for an occasion exactly such as this, and said, "Unlike some Digimon I know, I don't have a sixth sense to watch my own back with. Instead, I have you."And then she raised her hands into her signature card slash formation, and uttered the prase she hadn't properly used in six years:

_"Digi-Modify! Reckless Abandon, activate!_"

She slashed the card through her D-Arc's reader slot, and realised with a rush just how good it felt to be able to do that again – that she'd truly resumed her role as Renamon's Tamer.

Renamon didn't recognise the card that Rika had Digi-Modified her with, but she certainly felt its effects. For the duration of the card's time equipped to her, she realised, she would have little trouble dealing with anyone who attempted to get in Rika's way.

These were human beings, she knew, not Digimon, but suddenly one seemed just as good as the other when it came to throwing around a _Power Paw_. The thought surprised and shocked her, and it dawned on her then that Rika had swiped a card that took away her moral obligation to avoid hurting people.

Rika smiled, as she replaced her Digivice on her belt and jammed the expended card into her pocket. Reckless Abandon was a dangerous card to equip a living Digimon with; it turned them into berserkers, willing to thrash anything that crossed their path – human or Digimon alike.

It meant that should anyone be stupid enough to interfere, Renamon wouldn't think twice about tossing them around like a ragdoll, and she wouldn't feel bad about it later either. Hopefully, no-one would be so brainless as to get in her way.

Rika turned back to Maria, and blew an annoyingly familiar strand of hair out of her eye as casually as if this kind of thing happened every day.

The thing was, it _did_ happen every day; Rika frequently sent her classmates, particularly Maria, home with more minor cuts and bruises than all the members of the school's martial arts team put together. The number of hours she'd wasted, wondering why they didn't just learn to stay out of her way, was something that actually hurt to think about.

Renamon knew differently, however; the hypersensitive Digimon could hear Rika's rapid heartbeat, could see the sweat running down the back of her partner's neck and the vein pulsing near her temple as the girl's opponent got to her feet again and again, only to be struck down once more the very moment she raised a hand to fight back.

Like her partner's opponent didn't seem to know the meaning of surrender, Renamon had discovered that, in her absence Rika had become something of a fist-fighter, and was notorious for beating her adversaries until they couldn't stand.

So far beyond enraged was Rika that Renamon couldn't think of an appropriate word to describe her Tamer's fury with this girl, whom Renamon knew bore the scars of past beatings from Rika. This was the second clash between them in a week, and whatever the girl had done to anger Rika this time, it _must_ have been bad.

The lupine Digimon could plainly see why Rika had required her presence, despite their agreement with Yamaki that forbade the Tamers from calling their Digimon into view of the public. There were several humans in the crowd who, if not for her shocking entrance, easily looked as though they would attempt to help the girl whom had wound Rika to the point of snapping like this – not that it was a difficult feat to achieve at any rate, but the girl probably deserved it nonetheless.

With her Digimon watching her back, Rika kicked Maria's legs out from beneath her for the final time as the bloodied girl rose to her feet, and put her back down like a rabid dog; she pinned Maria to the floor with a foot planted firmly on her chest, and grabbed the girl's neck tie as she tried and failed to rise under the weight.

Wrapping it around her hand in one quick motion for a good grip, Rika pulled the garment tight around Maria's neck and watched her struggle in panic when she yanked her rival off the floor, and rammed her face-first into a row of lockers. Rika smashed her fist into the metal inches from Maria's bloodied face. The blow left a crater that could be seen from down the hallway. It was a clear warning; _move a muscle, and that's your head_.

Maria froze in fear; for all the times she'd dared to cross Nonaka, the girl had never gotten this pissed off with her – and she'd never had one of those _things_ watching her back, either. Still refusing to back down, she summoned the last of her courage to dare to look Rika in the eye, only to falter and flinch when the violent redhead snarled in her face.

"Next time you think about trying to piss me off, Maria, try to remember this piece friendly of advice: _do not_ be stupid enough to drag my personal life into your sick little mind games. Because I will take you apart, one piece at a time, until there's nothing left."

Rika grabbed the girl by the back of the scruff of her neck, spun her around and shoved her backwards. Cotton met metal with a resounding *thud*. She wanted Maria to see the seriousness in her eyes as she made her point.

"Now allow me to clarify this for _you_, and for _everybody_ else: I am _NOT_, and would _NEVER_ date Takato Matsuki. Get it? … Answer me!"

Maria remained stubbornly silent, and resolutely refused to respond. Seething at her rival's insolence, Rika grabbed the girl by the chest of her school blazer with both hands, and slammed her back into the locker. She took a small measure of satisfaction from seeing Maria's head whiplash forward as it bounced off the metal door; "I said _answer me_, damn it!" she bellowed, a fist raised above her head, ready to make Maria more sorry than the girl had ever been before.

Maria managed to grunt an acknowledgement; satisfied, Rika unclenched the fist that was holding the girl up, and allowed her rival to crumple into a heap again. Rika stooped to collect her things and calmly walked away, with Renamon right behind her, as if nothing had happened at all.

Every face in the crowd turned to watch Rika go, all of them edgy; the redhead was well-known to turn on anyone who dared to help the morons that were stupid enough to cross her, sometimes beating them more viciously and more quickly than she'd beaten the one who'd pissed her off in the first place.

Who would dare to help Maria, and risk incurring Rika's wrath? There were always a small few, usually the ones who trailed around with her between classes, but today even they shrank back with their heads bowed, eyes trained on the floor until Rika was gone.

Now Renamon understood; the girl, who was being quietly helped to her feet by some certain members of the crowd, had insinuated that Rika was dating Takato. For that, the Digimon was surprised that Rika hadn't stuffed her into that metal box and buried her alive.

True, Rika's opinion of Takato had apparently risen ever-so-slightly since the events of their brief stretch in the Digital World and the small war with the D-Reaper, and indeed in her six-year absence, but not enough to warrant any form of affection on her part, other than the simple friendship they shared.

To Rika, Takato was a Digimon Tamer; at best she quietly respected him as the group's unspoken leader – nothing less, and almost certainly nothing more; the only sure-fire exception to the fact was that his relationship with Jeri was a strong one and made the once-lonely girl happy, which earned him a mite more respect that he might receive otherwise.

So, quite naturally, the mere idea that Takato might betray Jeri for a brief fling with Rika had been an insult of the gravest nature, and had angered the volatile Tamer to such a degree that it had resulted in yet another bloody fist-fight.

Sometimes Renamon wondered what kind of Digimon her Tamer might have been, had Rika been born a digital lifeform like her; it was not something she chose to ponder too closely, for quite frankly, the idea of there being a Digimon capable of Rika's savage ferocity scared her – and, having been forced to brave the dangers of life in the Digital World alone for six years, _very little_ scared her any more.

Granted, there probably wasn't a single person in the whole of Japan who didn't know that Digimon actually existed, that they were more than just characters in a videogame or on trading cards, but this was probably the first time that any of Rika's so-called classmates had seen – _really_ seen - a 'live' Digimon up-close.

Renamon hadn't actually done anything to help her smear Maria across the hallway, but Rika could tell that each and every one of them was afraid of her Digimon partner – she could _see_ the fear in their faces. And in all honesty, she wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing. Scared people sometimes did stupid things…

Either way, Rika wasn't sticking around to find out which it was; in the mood she was in now, she'd probably send half her school grade to the nurse's office in the next ten minuets just for _existing_ if she stayed here, and if she caught anyone else spouting this bullshit, they'd be heading home early in a six-foot rubber bag.

"Renamon, get us out of here before I break someone else…" Rika muttered through gritted teeth, quietly seething and doing her best not to shout. The Digimon placed her hand on her Tamer's shoulder and, in front of an entire crowd of onlookers, teleported them away; reality warped around them like ripples on a pond, and then suddenly, they were gone.

Quickly, the rumours as to the identity of Rika's boyfriend were forgotten, replaced with something that was all too true:

_Rika Nonaka's one of the Digimon Tamers!_

And for that small fact alone, the flame of fear that burned among her fellow students – a _3-grades-wide __fear_ - of the notoriously-violent Rika Nonaka erupted into an inferno. Now, _no-one_ would dare speak ill of her or look at her in the wrong way; rumours like the one that had put Maria back in the nurse's office had just been made extinct.

Now, everyone knew that Rika Nonaka had just stepped up her game from aggressive to outright savage – and that the girl had a _real, live_ Digimon watching her back that would appear with the mere calling of its name. For Rika Nonaka's grade, along with those in the grades that were above and below hers, life at school would never be simple, or quiet, ever again.

* * *

Anyone care to try to give Rika a hug?

No? I didn't, either. Lord help the idiot who gave Maria the idea that she was sleeping with Takato... as for who the culprit is, well... that'll have to wait.

Many thanks to those who reviewed "The Rematch". Hope this met your expectations.

I'm still willing to fill a few ears with the backstory for this, by the way.


	4. Preview 2a Secrets

**Secrets**

All was quiet at the Nonaka residence. That is, until Rika burst through the front door and stormed into the family room. Seiko was surprised to see her granddaughter home so early, and it only cost the old woman a look at Renamon's expression to find out what was wrong.

Another fist-fight at school no doubt, and she'd come home to avoid more violence…Again.

Rika exploded at her Digimon suddenly, from across the room. "Why didn't you _tell_ me there would be trouble today?! If I'd known that she was going to… to _humiliate_ me like that then I would've kicked her ass as soon as looked at her! Why didn't you just _tell_ me?"

Seiko cleared her throat at the sound of coarse language and Rika apologised, but otherwise continued her ranting.

During certain moon phases Renamon had been partially clairvoyant for as long as Rika had known her, and would usually make a point of telling her Tamer of certain feelings she would have upon waking in the morning about the day ahead, be those feelings good or bad, and Rika had made a habit of taking them as omens, warnings to take more care around certain people or things. She'd often used those warnings to prepare for battles, and they had served her well in the past.

But today, the Digimon had been void of any such feelings, and while that wasn't uncommon, her Tamer was anything but fond of being left in the dark.

"If I had known this was going to happen I would have told you, Rika. Forgive me, but I had no feeling of anything this morning."

By now, the conversation –or rather, _argument_- had left the family room and was confined to Rika's room. Rika tossed her backpack into a corner haphazardly, and collapsed arms spread onto her futon.

Renamon saw that her partner was trying to calm herself down, and decided that perhaps it would be better to discuss this when Rika had finished centring herself.

Rika would be far easier to talk to about her fight and its possible consequences when she had finished locking up her explosive anger. But Rika's anger wanted to talk about it _now_.

"I can't believe the nerve of that bit-… that _girl_…" Rika corrected herself, almost swearing again; she knew her grandmother wouldn't tolerate it more than once, and not at all if her mother was home.

"What in hell's name gave her the idea that I was dating Takato, anyway?"

Rika asked no-one in-particular, having finally stopped shouting. Then it dawned on her; if the rumour had started at school, then the other kids – the ones who _hadn't_ seen what she did to people who spouted bullshit about her - would take it home with them.

And Ryo was supposed to be walking her home today… what if he overheard it? There wasn't much she could do about it until he got there, but she'd have to think of something to tell him; if she was pissed, then he'd be _fuming_.

In fact, he was likely to do more damage than she had, and that was _without_ that massive, temperamental hulk called Cyberdramon breathing down his neck, too – a Digimon with no qualms about swatting people aside, like they were just flies. Rika wouldn't be surprised if _Reckless Abandon_ was part of his core program.

And did Takato know anything about this? More to the point, what would Jeri think?

Suddenly, Renamon brought her out of her thoughts. "Rika, I can't understand why this is worrying you. We both know this rumour isn't true, that you haven't had anything to do with Takato. I… I saw you… at the party, with Ryo… and I know there is something between the two of you."

Rika's face grew dark, and her anger burst free of its freshly-locked cage. "What did you _say_? You're saying you've been _spying_ on us this whole time?!"

Renamon had expected Rika to be angry, but not to throw it in her face like this. She didn't take sarcasm from Terriermon, and she wasn't going to take this from her own Tamer. The only reaction Renamon could muster that Rika would understand when she was like this was to fight back, preferably with equal force to her increasingly pissed-off Tamer.

"Calm down, Rika! How do you expect me to protect you if you try to keep secrets from me?! I have _not_ been spying on you; I wouldn't do that to you. But if you want me to help you though this then I _demand_ a little respect!"

Rika was suddenly silent, too awed to speak; her anger evaporated in the space of an instant, faced with her partner's seething rebuke. In all the years since Renamon had approached her to ask to be tamed and made stronger, the Digimon had never responded harshly to her like this – not even in the beginning when she'd been little more than a pessimistic bitch. But it was her own fault, and Renamon was right; she shouldn't have tried to keep secrets from her; it was disrespectful, and it was _wrong_.

For that matter, Renamon had never once talked back or gone against her wishes, either. Renamon had been a loyal and obedient partner to her; was this any way to repay that devotion? Not in the slightest, and well she knew it; the Digimon half of the Tamer team had only recently returned to the Real World, and their partnerships had yet to return to the solid, unshakable bonds that had been before the defeat of the D-Reaper and Operation: Doodlebug.

In short, that meant that her own partnership with Renamon was, right now, best-described as _fragile_. She had to fix this, now, before it tore a void between them. It would mean doing something that she rarely allowed herself to do: issue an apology for her actions or words.

The light shuffling of padded paws on her room's tatami flooring caused her, finally, to look up. What Rika saw made her mind explode in panic. Renamon was turning to leave.

From somewhere in the vicinity of Rika's backpack, Renamon heard the sound of plastic cracking. She knew what it meant; she'd heard it once before, when Takato's rage at Beelzemon had forced Guilmon to digivolve to Megidramon, shattering their Digivice and unleashing the power of the Digital Hazard, tearing great rends in the fabric of the Digital World in the process. It meant her partnership with Rika, that precious, fragile link that at times was the only thing keeping her Tamer from falling apart, was wavering…_breaking_.

"Renamon, wait! I'm sorry!! I…I didn't mean to snap like that. But I thought… We thought no-one knew… and we tried _so_ hard to keep it a secret…."

The Digimon halted, a hand on the door, and turned to look back into the room.

"Alright… I accept your apology. But the two of you were foolish, to believe that I didn't know; there isn't a single thing that happens in my Tamer's life that I'm not aware of when I am here. Regardless of whether or not you wish me to be aware of it, no matter what 'it' might be, I _know_. With Sakuyamon's connection between us, you should know that better than anyone."

Renamon approached the futon purposefully, deviating only to pick up her partner's discarded backpack, before kneeling next to the girl, and placing a hand on Rika's shoulder. Delving into the open pack without taking her eyes from Rika's bewildered face, Renamon produced the girl's injured D-Arc Digivice - the very embodiment of the link between them - and placed it delicately into Rika's hands. The screen was badly chipped in one corner; a hairline crack slithered precariously across the display.

"This needs to be fixed," she said quietly. "_We_ need to fix it, before it falls beyond repair."

Rika's eyes fell upon the damage, and her head dipped in shame. "What…what've I done…?"

This was the most serious trauma their partnership had ever suffered, and of all people, _she_ had dealt it. Now the link between them was all but a killing blow from falling apart. Renamon was right; they needed to fix this, and _right now_.

The overwhelming sense of guilt fell upon her shoulders like an iron weight, and it forced tears from her eyes. Rika brought the device, their link, to her chest, and clutched it as tightly as she dared for fear of lengthening the crack further. For the first time in a long time, Rika allowed herself to cry, and she wept.

Rika laid her head on her partner's shoulder and, all dignity forgotten, choked back a sob as the tears streamed slowly down her face. Renamon pulled the anguished girl into a soft embrace; ironically, it was during times like this that Renamon felt closest to her partner – when the girl needed her the most. The only way they could be any closer was to Biomerge and become Sakuyamon. Softly, she whispered forgiveness in her partner's ear, and waited for Rika to regain her composure.

A few minuets later, the sobbing became sniffling, and then stopped; tears were wiped away, leaving puffy red tell-tale trails in their wake. Rika did not remove herself from Renamon's embrace, and the Digimon did not loosen her soft hold on her tamer.

Quietly, the air between them began to shine with a dim, white glow, and Renamon felt her ruff prickle a little. She smiled, felt Rika do the same, and the hum grew in volume. The sulphurous smell of hot plastic filled the air around them, before vanishing just as quickly. Rika dared to sneak a look at the source of the stench; her D-Arc's screen glowed sublimely, and the little treasure hummed as it busily finished repairing itself.

"Good as new," she whispered, and smiled a subdued grin at their little blue-and-white link, enclosed tightly in her hand – repaired, and stronger than ever.

---

Crisis averted, albeit narrowly, Rika and Renamon were content to sit like that for a while, unmoving. Renamon marvelled at how quickly Rika, normally closed off, had bared her emotions; perhaps she did not realise that this was they key to repairing their Digivice, and likewise, their link, because she herself hadn't realised until the little thing was already knitting the damage back together.

But even so, it proved that their partnership was fluid, like life itself; they would have their ups and downs, as humans liked to say, but when it truly mattered, when it 'hit the fan', they stood together, unshakable.

Overwhelmed by the sudden, rushing torrent of emotion that had struck her, flowed from her to repair their fractured link, Rika felt more drained now than she had in a long time. She could really use a nap right now, and was entitled to one by rights so far as she was concerned.

But alas, it was not to be. Just as her eyes were ready to flutter shut, her alarm clock chimed to sound the hour, and reality descended on her again. _Ryo…_ she thought, and quickly abandoned the idea of napping.

"Stay; you're tired now, you need to rest," Renamon muttered to her quietly in protest, as she moved to disentangle herself from her partner's grasp, but Rika couldn't remain stationary. She had things to do, likely had fights to break up, and maybe one or two to _start_ as well. _He'll just bark and charge in without waiting for the full story… when he's pissed off he's as bad as I am…_ she thought.

Since his return from the Digital World, he was usually so cool-headed that he was practically cold, but once he kicked off, he could make a big enough mess of someone to make Cyberdramon cringe – and that took some serious doing.

She didn't know what was more frightening about the last few weeks, since they'd started officially, if secretly, dating; the number of snide comments people had made about her spending time with him, or the number of times he'd come _this_ close to mangling those people for daring to make them.

And at that, her mind took off into a world of its own, accompanied by her mouth.

"Who else knows, if we're that obvious…" Rika wondered aloud.

"My mom will _freak_ when she finds out that we're sleeping together. She'll say that we're too young for that kind of relationship, or that I'm not ready. She'll try to stop us seeing each other…

"I think… I think this might be love, Renamon… and maybe I've felt that way for a long while… and if she keeps us apart I'll go crazy without him. I'll lose control if she splits us up… It's bad enough that I have to wake up every morning without him as it is…"

When Renamon silently refused to release her yet, Rika began to twirl her fingers in her partner's ruff absentmindedly. The usually aloof Digimon did her best to comfort her Tamer;

"I know how much it hurts you, Rika; I see the sorrow in your eyes when you open them to find he's not lying there, when you want him or need him, and it hurts me to see you like this. If you're not happy, then I can'tbe happy--"

"And neither can I," said a sudden voice from the hallway, cutting Renamon short.

The two looked up to see Rika's grandmother enter the room, and the solemn-faced old woman took up a seat on the futon next to her granddaughter, opposite the girl's Digimon companion. "But you have nothing to worry about, Rika,"

"I've known about you and Ryo since the beginning, and you know that if it gave your mother and I cause for concern, then we'd have spoken to you about it. You're a sensible girl, if not a little reckless with your temper and your fists, but the two of you have been very grown-up about it all, if I may say so,"

Rika smiled lopsidedly, and her grandmother returned the gesture.

"Trust me, Rika; your mother couldn't be happier for you, and neither could I… if I hadn't threatened to cancel her last photo shoot, she'd have thrown you a party, I think... that's how _pleased_ she is for you. Ryo is such a nice boy, and between him and Renamon, we know you're in safe hands. I know, because I've just seen it for myself."

Rika wiped away a single, stray tear as it began falling, and thanked the two for their support, but now that she'd calmed down enough to think rationally, it was time to stop moping and find Ryo, and start looking for a way to straighten this whole mess out.

Her grandmother left them to it; Renamon nodded to the old woman as she departed with a smile, and Rika began to change out of her school uniform. She hated wearing the stupid jacket, and the stupid shirts and neck-ties drove her crazy. And she _refused_ point-blank to wear the low-cut skirts the girls in her class had been issued at the start of the school year.

In fact, she'd refused to wear the whole damn get-up until the Principle had complained to her mother about it, and 'Makino' had talked her into 'being reasonable'.

But she'd stood her ground on the skirt, at least; she'd insisted on a pair of jet-black jeans, no-compromise, and then burned that damn skirt just make her point – if she wanted to stand out then she damn-well would, and anyone who thought otherwise could float to hell in a hand-basket.

She was seen at school as a hard-core rebel - some thought her plain out of her mind. And that didn't bother her in the slightest. What _did_ bother her was that, in no-time at all she'd seen some of the guys in her grade taking that same leaf from her book – brain-dead sheep, all of them, completely unable to decide something for themselves without someone else's approval.

They did nothing but follow the crowd, obsessed with 'blending in' – and there was little that burned her more. But it was those who'd started copying her that really pissed her off; they honestly believed that they were striking out, daring to be different, but all they were doing was, yet again, following someone else's example and getting into 'the rebel trend'. She'd happily meted out beltings to one or two of them just for having the nerve to call it that.

Stepping out of Rika's way, Renamon retreated to her favourite, shadowy corner of Rika's room, to observe her partner quietly as the girl busied herself with changing clothes and other things; 'preparing for war', was what Rika jokingly called it, and after today's fiasco in the hallway, she might as well have been doing just that.

As she leaned against the wall in her corner, Renamon noted that since her return from the Digital World, Rika had become both more of a rebel towards her mother, and more outgoing towards the other Tamers.

She held a special relationship with Jeri in-particular, as the only other female Tamer in the group that was of a similar age; Suzie was there too, and recently Impmon's partners Ai and Mako had reappeared as well, but it wasn't the same. There was a feeling of tension between her partner and Jeri, Renamon sensed, as though something… unusual had occurred in her absence. It was as though a bond of some kind had been formed between them, one that she couldn't quite understand, couldn't fathom, and in a way that scared her; it felt as though Rika and Jeri were concealing the truth about it – from _everyone_.

What really nipped at her senses, though, was that it smelled something akin to the bond Rika shared with Ryo, but with a different sort of tang to it; it was an aggressive smell, something… strange… alien to her. And though it came from both Rika and the other girl, it did seem at times to come more strongly from Jeri…

The two often had friendly matches in the _DigiBattle_ card game, 'practice runs' Rika called them, and in her absence Jeri had become almost as good at the game as Rika herself, Renamon had discovered. The other Tamers had even referred to her as the 'Digimon Princess' once, which Rika had laughed and agreed with, much to Jeri's embarrassment.

It was the first time she had seen her partner truly happy since the night they had materialised in Shinjuku Park, the very moment they had returned from the Digital World, and it was a stark contrast, in retrospect, to the cloud of aggression that seemed to envelop Rika like some strange defence mechanism. _Hindsight is a fine thing,_ she thought, with a touch of sarcasm; _had I been paying attention when we arrived, I might have sensed the difference in Rika immediately… I should have expected it…_

Renamon thought back to her many conversations with Ryo in the Digital World, when she had learned that Rika had been greatly distressed by her untimely departure. It had torn her partner apart inside, to loose her so unfairly. Renamon felt that she at least partially understood what her tamer had gone through; she had suffered emotionally too, with their bond being strained by the distance and dimensional barriers between them.

It had _hurt_ her to be apart from the girl, something she had never experienced before, and although the sting lessened over time as she focused on aiding Ryo's search for the other tamers' partners, it had never truly gone away – she wouldn't let it; it spurred her to make haste when she became tired, and gave her hope that with each passing day she became one step closer to returning to Rika's side.

But it had hurt Rika more so, according to Ryo. Renamon had learned from him that Rika suffered from something he'd called 'Separation Anxiety'. It meant that the girl couldn't handle being parted from those close to her. Renamon knew that this stemmed from the girl's loss of her father.

Rika had confided in her, long ago, that her father was not a part of her life, through no fault of her own, and that it troubled her deeply. Digimon had no literal concept of parentage, they didn't breed in the same way as humans, but she could grasp what it meant for the girl to loose her father. At the time Renamon had sensed that it was painful for the girl to discuss, and she did not wish to push Rika for information, but still, it troubled her partner, so, naturally, it troubled her too.

But nevertheless… it had done things to the girl's mind, to loose her closest friend as a consequence of their great victory over the D-Reaper. It had damaged her in some way; if Ryo was to be believed, Rika would spend days, even weeks, without any contact with anyone except himself and Jeri, and would even shun her family.

And she'd become violent. That had greatly troubled Renamon to learn, that some part of her partner had become so dark in her absence – as a _result_ of her absence - that Rika would lash out at those around her. Ryo had said that Rika only 'got nasty' when someone provoked her, but even so, it had strengthened her resolve to return to the Real World as quickly as--

_*pa-tsh!*_

Renamon sneezed from the sudden rush of air that tickled her nose, and shook her head sharply before blinking and looked around to see what had ripped her from her daze of thought.

"Snap out of it, daydreamer," Rika giggled, school tie in-hand, at her partner's stupor. "Could you grab me a drink from the kitchen while I get dressed?" The girl asked, Renamon noting that Rika was in the process of rummaging through her wardrobe - mostly composed of denim aside from the few dresses stuffed at the back - while half-naked. Rika had no sense of modesty even in her own home, and the girl's skin glowed positively golden in the afternoon light.

"Of course," Renamon replied, beginning to understand why Ryo, among others, found her partner so attractive. While Rika made a conscious effort to _not_ seem appealing to other humans, even her Digimon partner could see that the girl was beautiful.

In some ways, Renamon realised, that ethereal beauty that Rika possessed became a part of her when they Biomerged. _Perhaps she is why Sakuyamon has so much… finesse,_ the fox Digimon thought, chuckling inwardly, before getting up and moving for the kitchen.

She had noted how Rika had filled out in her six-year absence; the girl was far more a young woman now than when the two had first met, having aged and grown as Digimon did only through Digivolution, and Renamon could have sworn that her Tamer had been stealing leaves from Sakuyamon's book in terms of her beauty and physical growth.

Boys often did a double-take when she passed them in the street, and not because she still chose to dress like them. Her trademark broken heart shirt had long gone, she'd worn it to pieces, along with its healed equivalent, but she still looked as though she couldn't quite decide, in terms of personality more than appearance, which gender she belonged to.

On the other hand, the girl was very much in-tune with her sexuality; Rika was well-aware of the fact that she was a young woman, and she wasn't afraid to show it. She and Ryo were left alone by their Digimon often, and when Ryo wasn't available to satisfy her… Well, Rika knew a number of ways to… entertain herself. The girl had gone to great lengths to make her room as soundproof to the human ear as possible since her first encounter with Ryo.

The thoroughly-human things that Rika chose to amuse herself with when her lover was not present were… alien to her, and as much as Renamon was innately curious to know what drove her partner to abuse herself in such a way, the Digimon did her very best to know as little as possible about Ryo and Rika's physical relationship.

She'd already seen more than she would have liked to, having been witness to what occurred between her partner and Ryo on the night of the Digimon's homecoming party, and had realised at the time that that had only been the calm before the storm. Seiko had openly stated as much to her, as if she had foreseen it all long before any of it had occurred. Perhaps she had even known that Rika would try to deceive them about it…

Luckily, Rika had more important things to do right now, like finding Ryo and cleaning this whole mess up before it blew out of control - which, if events so-far transpired were any gauge, it almost certainly would. Better that Rika focus on finding Ryo and quashing this coming maelstrom than consider locking herself in her room – alone – to do any of _those things_ to herself.

The noises the girl made, the smells her body emitted… they were made for human senses to detect, to understand on a subliminal level. In Digimon… well, it made her hackles stand up just thinking about it. There just seemed something… dark about the whole business, like Rika knew what she was doing was wrong in some way, and that was why she enjoyed doing it so much as she did.

And in truth, that scared Renamon more than any of the other worrying things she'd learned about her partner since her return.


	5. Preview 3 The Beginning

**DISCLAIMER:  
**

**The characters and all related material herein are the property of their creators and/or copyright holders, who may be too numerous to name here. _Team Hydro_ and all affiliated parties do not claim ownership of said characters and/or material. _Team Hydro_ does not seek to infringe upon any trademarks, copyright, or any other existing legal document that may be connected to any of the above.**

Aright, you guys know the drill by now - this isn't a continuation of either of the two former chapters.

This preview piece is entitled **The Beginning**_. _It's a HenryxAlice piece, and it's lemony-fresh.

Storywise, Henry is visiting Alice at Dolphin's house when a storm kicks up, and she insists he and Terriermon stay the night. And it all goes downhill from there.

Note: BlackLabramon = Dobermon's Rookie form. More in A/N below.

* * *

**Team Hydro Preview - Tamers #3**

**The Beginning  
**

Henry's eyes flashed open when he heard the bedroom door slide open. He'd always been a light sleeper. The slightest noise would wake him, and even Terriermon couldn't sneak up on him in his sleep; the Digimon had tried several times in the past, in the spirit of play, and failed miserably on every attempt.

But this was different; there was someone watching him from the doorway, he could feel their eyes scanning across him carefully, and the door closed as suddenly as it had opened. Whoever they were, they were in the room now, lurking between him and the door. Terriermon remained strangely silent, which began to worry him.

As they approached he turned on his right side, as if to seem disturbed in his dreams, and closed his eyes, before slowly reaching under his pillow for his D-Ark Digivice and the 'Digivolution' Modify card he always kept with him. Gargomon and his mini-guns might not make _too_ much of a mess of Dolphin's spare room, not if they weren't fired, but they'd also make pretty damn good mêlée weapons.

Plus there was Gargomon's massive size to consider; no thief in his right mind would stay in the same house as a giant, talking rabbit with miniguns for hands and a penchant for giggling manically, usually when it was least appropriate to do so.

But his fears of an intruder were unfounded; it was Alice. He recognised the way she was breathing, and her partner, BlackLabramon, would have gone berserk if it were a burglar, not to mention Terriermon would've woken him – and the rest of the house - had it been someone he didn't know or recognise. That alone should have clued him in.

All the same, he still pretended to be asleep. His hand left the Digivice, but he did not move otherwise. Why the girl had come to his room in the small hours of the morning he couldn't fathom. It _was_ her house, but still…

"I know you're awake," she said, speaking so quietly that her voice was barely above a whisper. "I saw the light outside reflecting in your eyes. You don't have to pretend."

Henry heard BlackLabramon, Dobermon's Rookie form, padding quietly past the door; the surprisingly laid-back Virus-Type probably double-checking that his vulnerable Tamer was okay. Henry frowned as his own partner silently vacated the room, Terriermon making his sharp exit as if to prove the point he'd made earlier – perhaps Alice really did want more than friendship from him.

Suddenly, he was alone with the girl. Had his friend been right, and had he been too harsh with him for stating what had probably been the obvious? He would contemplate that, and probably apologise to the Digimon, in the morning. Right now, he had other things to worry about, like why Alice had come into his loaned room at… 2:37 in the morning.

Henry bit the bullet and returned to laying on his back, before sitting up to face his hostess, who was knelt near the left side of the futon. She was looking him in the eye now, something she hadn't been able to do earlier; whether out of nervousness or something else, he'd been unable to tell, and still couldn't.

There was something odd about the corner of her mouth, he noticed, but couldn't place exactly what it was. She wore a short, lacy nightdress - jet-black, naturally - complimented by a pair of dark, long and fingerless gloves, tied at the elbow with ribbons wide as shoelaces.

Even in her nightclothes, the pale girl had an unshakable obsession with the colour black – and he had to admit, it looked good on her.

The thin, thigh-length dress appeared almost too small for her; it clung to her lithe, sun-depraved form, concealing her neatly but leaving little to the imagination – very little. It occurred to him that she might be trying to seduce him. His cheeks reddened at the notion.

His blush must have been obvious, because that odd thing about the corner of her mouth suddenly wrinkled into a shy grin, and then vanished altogether.

"Do you know why I'm here, Henry?" She whispered, a quiver in her voice; be it nervousness, cold, or both. In response he shook his head.

"BlackLabramon told you earlier that I wanted to be a more active part of the Tamer team… and while he wasn't lying, he… he didn't tell you everything. I asked him not to." She broke eye contact with him, glanced at the floor, but only for a fleeting moment.

"He wasn't specific, and perhaps if he had been, I wouldn't have had the courage to come at all. It's not just the other Tamers, Henry… It's you. I… I like you, and that's why I asked you to stay; so that I could tell you and that perhaps you would tell me how you felt about that. I… I need to know."

_Terriermon was right,_ he thought, and met her gaze before it dropped again. _…and I think I might just like her, too. What… what do I do?_ Still staring at the floor, Alice spoke again; she really was whispering now, so quietly that he almost didn't hear what she said. "Please, Henry… not knowing what you think of me is driving me crazy. I _need_ to--"

Her words caught in her throat as Henry reached out and, ever-so-gently, placed his hand over hers. She was shaking, no doubt fearing the worst; that she had made a fool of herself for nothing. Her fears evaporated when he took her hand fully in both of his, and smiled at her.

That smile, the simple gesture of taking her hand, was all the assurance she needed; he understood, and her affection was reciprocated. Then he softly tugged her toward him, and wrapped his arms around her.

For the first time, the two of them kissed, and he released her long enough to pull back the bedclothes before they lay down together and drew close again.

_Terriermon, you're incorrigible,_ he thought, as he lightly kissed at her neck, and realised he'd struck a nerve when she gasped. More light kisses followed, and she moaned quietly as she guided his hands down her body to her waist.

He pulled her closer, and felt the peaks of her breasts brush against him through the fabric of her dress as she pressed herself harder against him. He noticed, as her hips came to rest firmly against his, that there was a warm dampness emanating from between her legs and he came to realise that, without a shadow of a doubt, he had aroused her somehow.

Was it the kisses, perhaps? Had he, perhaps, found one of Takato's fabled 'sweet spots'? Takato had talked quietly about those with him a few weeks ago, and often talked to him about his relationship with Jeri in confidence.

Takato had claimed to have found a number of spots on the girl's body that, when kissed or caressed, made her cry out. She'd stayed over one night, and things had gotten nothing short of messy after that.

Apparently, it had also gotten loud, or rather Jeri had, and Takato had been thankful that neither his parents nor Guilmon were at home that night.

_Thank god Alice isn't as lively as Jeri can be…_ Henry thought; _Dobermon would be through that door in seconds if she started screaming…_

It dawned on him at that moment, the importance of his father's talking him into carrying contraception in his wallet, after his 16th birthday; if it could happen as quickly and unexpectedly as this, then it could happen anywhere and at any time.

But he couldn't stop now that he'd started, nervous though he was; she'd think something was wrong, or that he was having second thoughts, which he most certainly wasn't. He felt her hips push against him again, impatiently, and he slid a hand down to her thigh. The reaction was instant, another gasp, followed by another of those quiet moans that shook him inside.

The leg to which the thigh belonged lifted over his hip and hooked around his waist, locking them together, and then she took hold of the stray hand and guided it to where it was needed. She played it in her navel for a moment, before directing it further south again, and cupped it over her girlhood.

This touch, apparently, was like a pleasurable jolt of electricity; the light pressure she'd had him place upon her there had made her lock up, and that jerking movement had done it again.

Henry was intrigued, and began to softly massage the dampening flesh beneath his hand while he kissed at her neck again. Again he discovered the immediate effect; another moan, and her breathing quickened again and again as the palm of his hand stroked against a nub of what he guessed to be pure nerve; her breath caught in her throat when a finger slipped between the folds of skin and into a small, tight crevice.

Her hand shot down to his again and grasped it firmly, and manoeuvred a second finger to join the first, slowly forcing them into the soft, wet place to the second knuckle, before withdrawing them and pushing them back in again, going deeper and moving faster with each entry.

Henry caught on and soon he didn't need to be guided. Not long afterwards, Alice's body locked up again and shuddered violently, before a warm, thick and sticky something began seeping passed his fingers. _Was that an orgasm?_ He wondered, shocked that he'd brought her off so quickly, or in fact, at all.

The expression of utter bliss on her face was enough to answer his question. But she soon recovered, and with a hungry look in her eyes, she came back with a vengeance. She wanted more, he realised, and her strong desire was starting to unnerve him a little.

Alice was suddenly looking him dead in the eye again, a sign he would later discover meant she was about to say or do something very much sincere, and whispered seven, simple words to him.

"Henry… I want you to take me." He almost choked, trying not to gasp. What she had just asked of him was not only completely unexpected, but it scared him clean out of his wits. What was worse, she seemed deadly-serious; there was a surety about the way she had said it, as if it was something she had spent hours thinking about, although it was so clearly a spur-of-the-moment decision.

His father's nagging flashed through his mind, and the importance of what his wallet held within hit him again. "But Alice… You're --"

"I know," She cut his apprehension short, firmly so. "But that doesn't change my mind. I _want_ this. I want _you_."

Henry sighed, hoping he hadn't sounded as concerned as he really was; his fingertips were still tingling from the sensation of brushing against her inner barrier. "Alright… He mumbled. "Give me a few seconds. I've gotta get something…"

He carefully got out of the bed, and immediately his body began protesting at the loss of Alice's warmth. He tried to ignore it, and moved to the dresser upon which he had emptied his pockets before bed.

His wallet seemed to enclose an iron weight as he picked it up and opened it, and retrieved one of the two silver foil packages with a shaking hand, from a zippered pocket.

He took a moment more, wondering if he'd need both, but settled for just the one; if he should happen to need the other, he could always come back for it, though he doubted he would. _But what if this one breaks?_ He thought, and reconsidered, before taking both back to the bed with him.

_I hope we know what we're doing, here… Dolphin's gonna have my head if I hurt her…_ he thought as he pulled the sheets over them, and as he pulled her close again he found that she had removed her nightdress. The gloves, however, were still present – kinky. They were all she was wearing now.

She turned away, her back towards him; _maybe she's ashamed to show herself to me,_ he thought for a moment, before she snuggled into him and wrapped him around her again. She seemed content to just have him hold her for a few minuets, and Henry could have sworn she'd fallen asleep in his arms, and then she decided it was time.

"I'm ready," she mumbled, and returned his hand to her navel again. He felt her stray hand settle on the waistband of his cotton boxer-shorts and awkwardly try to pull down on them. "You won't need those…" she muttered, and he could see her blush. He got the message, and drew them off, tossing them out of the futon and onto the clothes he'd taken off before he'd bunked down. _If she's scared,_ _then at least the feeling's mutual…_ he thought as he tore open the little foil sachet, and made use of its contents.

He was shaking as he put on the contraception, and this didn't escape Alice's attention. She turned to face him again, and as he looked up, she uttered a phrase that he never expected to hear from her.

"Relax, Henry. _Mou-men-tai_."

And then as she kissed him again, he felt her slide his length into her. She flinched for a half-second as he shattered her maidenhead, but made no sound to compliment whatever pain she might have felt. He held her closer, to comfort her all the same, and felt her fingers digging into his back as their intimate dance began.

* * *

And that, as they say, is a wrap.

**More on Dobermon's Rookie Form:**  
For those who care to know, we chose to give Dobermon a rookie form here because, quite frankly, Dobermon is a Champion Level form, and is HUGE - not exactly the compact package of the average housepet. We figured it'd make sense that, while at home, he'd revert to Rookie Form like Guilmon and the other Tamed Digimon. We chose a Virus-Type variation of Labramon, Minami's partner from _Battle of Adventurers_, because we felt the following Digivolution Chart was plausable for Dobermon:

Paomon Xiamon BlackLabramon **Dobermon** Cerberumon Anubismon  
(Fresh In-Training Rookie **Champion** Ultimate Mega)

BlackLabramon is a Virus-Type Digimon because Dobermon is a Virus-Type turned Vaccine-Type. Not all Virus-Type Digimon are bad eggs; if you'd care to recall, Guilmon is a Virus-Type.

Thanks for reading our preview pieces. Keep an eye out for any edits I might make to these three pieces, and here's hoping you'll be interested in reading the finished pieces when they are eventually finished.

Reviews would be most appreciated - feedback (detailed if you can spare the time) is most important to me at this point.

Thanks again for reading, and feel free to check out my profile every so often for updates and other works, be they full pieces or previews of future works.

**Special Thanks for reviews and opinions:**

**- lil miss rebel**

**- Unknown 2008**

**- JuMiKu**

**- JenniferYuy  
**


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